170 The Science of Life. 



him for eighteen years, and was completed in 1893. ^ 

 stands alone as a compendium of palaeontology. 



Among the post-Darwinians there has been no more 

 stimulating worker than Prof. Edward Drinker Cope 

 (1840-1897), nor any whose work more strikingly illus- 

 trates the influence of the evolution-idea as an abiding 

 thought. " Though, perhaps, often premature, and 

 sometimes mingled with much error, which a more 

 cautious inquirer would have avoided by waiting for 

 additional evidence, his remarkable speculations some 

 have even dared to regard them as wild guesses have 

 had an influence on the progress of modern biological 

 research which it is impossible to estimate." 



His studies on fossil fishes and primitive vertebrates, 

 on labyrinthodont amphibians, on anomodont reptiles, 

 on extinct ungulates, and many more, stand out as 

 monumental contributions to palaeontology. The primi- 

 tive mammal Phenacodus, a generalized type believed 

 to have affinities with several of the orders of mam- 

 mals, and with ungulates in particular, was one of his 

 most interesting discoveries; while his " Tritubercular 

 Theory", which traces back all the forms of molar teeth 

 to a simple three-cusped or tritubercular type, may 

 serve as an instance of his most successful morpho- 

 logical inductions. Osborn calls it (< one of the chief 

 anatomical generalizations of the present century". 



Along with his friend Alpheus Hyatt, well known for 

 his researches on the shells of extinct cephalopods, 

 Cope founded the American school of Neo-Lamarckians. 

 Palaeontology seemed to him to furnish decisive proof 

 of the inheritance of acquired characters, and to this 

 belief in use-inheritance he added a theory, which has 

 cropped up in many guises, that organisms were moved 

 to vary by an inherent growth-force which he termed 

 " bathmism". 



Darwin himself insisted on the fundamental impor- 

 tance of palaeontological facts as evidences of the 

 Paiaeontoio Doctrine of Descent, and Huxley once said 

 and Z Evoiu - Sy that if evolution had not already been an 

 accepted theory, the palaeontologists would 

 have been forced to invent it. As with other depart- 



